Tone Usage Outside of Alerts
During September 2010, the staff of KCST-FM in Florence, Oregon noticed that the station's EAS equipment would repeatedly unmute as if receiving an incoming EAS message several times a week. During each event, which was relayed from KKNU in Springfield, the same commercial advertisement for ARCO/BP gasoline could be heard, along with the words "This test has been brought to you by ARCO". Further investigation by the primary station transmitting the commercial revealed that the spot had been produced using an audio clip of an actual EAS header which had been modified to lower the header's volume and presumably prevent it from triggering false positive alert reactions in EAS equipment. The spot was distributed nationally, and after it had once been identified as the source of the false EAS equipment trips, various stations around the country reported having had similar experiences. After a widespread notification by the Society of Broadcast Engineers was issued, ARCO's ad agency withdrew the commercial from airplay. McKenzie River Broadcasting, the parent company of KKNU, was later served with a Notice of Apparent Liability with a forfeiture amount of $10,000 for having played the commercial advertisement containing the header tones. This issue, once considered resolved without a fine being levied, resurfaced in 2013, holding up KKNU's license renewal application. Ultimately, no action by the FCC was taken and the license renewal was granted. *On June 15, 2012, WNKY, the NBC/CBS affiliate in Bowling Green, Kentucky premiered an advertisement for a local licensed sports apparel store it produced, featuring EAS tones within the ad used in a non-emergency manner and went out over the station's main NBC signal and CBS digital subchannel. On November 5, 2013, the station's owner, Max Media, through its licensee, MMK License, was assessed a $39,000 fine (listed in the FCC's statement as a "voluntary contribution to the U.S. Treasury") by the FCC due to the ad. WNKY's digital channels, in addition to the FCC fine, will also launch a local campaign about the EAS through their programs and the station's website, air additional emergency preparation public service announcements, and lease space on their tower to the Warren County Emergency Management agency and the City of Bowling Green for modernized warning equipment. Additionally in the same manner, the FCC proposed a $25,000 fine against the cable network TBS and its corporate parent Time Warner for an inappropriate use of EAS tones within a 2012 promotional spot for their talk show Conan which had not been put past standards and practices; the use of tones was part of a promotion involving guest Jack Black. *Tones from the EAS were used in the trailer for the 2013 film Olympus Has Fallen; cable providers were fined $1.9 million by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on March 3, 2014 for misuse of EAS tones. An event similar to this previously occurred in November 2013, when TBS was fined $25,000 for the aforementioned use of EAS tones in a Conan advertisement. *On October 24, 2014, television viewers of certain stations in Atlanta, Detroit, and Austin reported seeing EAS messages and notifications.[41] The emergency alert originated at Nashville, Tennessee radio station WSIX-FM, where morning show host Bobby Bones replayed the 2011 EAS test as part of a rant about a genuine EAS test from Nashville's Fox affiliate, WZTV, locally interrupting Game 2 of the 2014 World Series on October 22. The errant test was relayed to some radio and television stations and cable systems nationwide, as Bobby Bones' program was also broadcast on other Country-formatted stations, particularly those owned by WSIX-FM's parent company, iHeartMedia (formerly Clear Channel Communications).[42] On May 19, 2015, iHeartMedia was fined $1 million for the incident, and was ordered to implement a three-year compliance plan and remove all EAS tones or similar-sounding noises from its audio production libraries in order to avoid any further incidents. *From August 4 to August 6, 2016, Tegna, Inc.-owned NBC affiliate WTLV in Jacksonville, Florida aired an ad several times during NBC's primetime coverage of the 2016 Summer Olympicsproduced by the marketing department of the National Football League's Jacksonville Jaguars featuring out-of-sequence EAS tones over Jaguars training camp footage and a voiceover noting 'this is not a test, this is an emergency broadcast transmission...seek shelter immediately', along with the on-screen text 'the storm is coming'. The ad aired four times before station compliance authorities pulled the advertisement after the local news industry blog FTVLive criticized the station for carrying it, especially during the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season. FTVLive's piece would be noted by the FCC in their decision against WTLV rendered on May 30, 2017, when it was given a $55,000 fine for carrying the offending Jaguars ad.